'Obviously, I didn't have all of my parts': The long walk home from war continues

The I.E.D. blast causes total disorientation. Army Sgt. Robert Easley Jr. is hurled into the air like a rag-doll. His hearing is gone. Eyes are clotted with dirt. Mental confusion reigns.

Yet amid all this, the mind tries to protect itself. Perhaps this is why, when Rob hops into that ditch outside of Kandahar, Afghanistan, and takes that fateful step onto the well-hidden IED, he initially believes someone else has been blown up. Not him.

Rob doesn't know it yet, but his wounds are massive. If he lives, his road to recovery will be monumental.

Luckily, Rob has married well. Megan Easley is a 19-year-old freshman at Shippensburg University when she first meets her future husband. But there are no fireworks or other Hollywood-style indication that the course of both their lives has been forever altered.

A second meeting when Rob is on leave from his first combat tour in Iraq proves a different story. A connection is made. Romance soon follows, then marriage. The future is bright.

Then, on that day in Afghanistan everything changes, testing the mettle of a marriage and the love and commitment of a young woman who didn't know all she was bargaining for when she became an Army wife.

But as a new battle begins, Megan Easley more than rises to the occasion. This woman with a warrior's spirit is about to join the fight. But first, Rob must find a way to tell Megan the awful news.

Editor's Note: For the past 3 1/2 years, PennLive photographer Joe Hermitt and reporter John Luciew have borne witness to the fierce, often frustrating battle Rob and his wife, Megan, have waged in order for Rob to walk again. We are privileged to share the words, pictures and video that chronicle the many triumphs and setbacks, the laughs and the tears, the joys and the losses, that define Rob's and Megan's long walk home from war.